Jack Sullivan at a press conference with Archbishop Vincent Nichols last year (Mazur/catholicchurch.org.uk)

Deacon Jack Sullivan says two other people were healed of serious illnesses after he touched them with a lock of Newman's hair

A young girl was healed of intense chronic pain while watching the beatification of John Henry Newman on television, it has been claimed.

Deacon Jack Sullivan, whose severe spinal condition was miraculously cured after he prayed to Cardinal Newman, said the girl’s mother called him after the Mass to say her daughter’s pain had suddenly disappeared.

He said she was one of several people who had been cured of serious illness after attending healing services that he has conducted around America.

Mr Sullivan’s own healing, approved by the Vatican last year, led to the Victorian cardinal being beatified in September. A second miracle is all that is needed for the Church to recognise him as a saint.

He said the girl who was healed during Newman’s beatification had suffered from reflex sympathetic dystrophy syndrome, a disease characterised by continuous and intense pain that worsens over time and for which there is no cure.

Mr Sullivan told the Tablet: “Her mother asked me to pray for her daughter, who has been in hospital for two years. I prayed for her during the Mass and the mother called me back all excited saying that during the Mass all of the pain stopped… Lately I’ve been told that this young lady will be walking before Christmas.”

Mr Sullivan said two other people had been cured after he had touched them with a portion of Newman’s hair in healing services in Boston and Salem, New Hampshire.

One teenage boy was healed from a severe brain injury he had sustained in a car crash. Mr Sullivan said: “He could no longer speak or walk. When I touched him with the relic he seemed to come back to life.”

Another man from Detroit was in the advanced stages of liver cancer but after the healing service he said a CAT scan showed “all the cancer had gone”.

Mr Sullivan also said that Newman was “still with me, very dramatically so”. He said: “If it weren’t for him I probably would have been paralysed, unable to continue with the diaconate or my job… I start my day by saying, ‘Good morning, Cardinal Newman, my intercessor and my very faithful friend’.”